


Widow in Sweaters

by CrimsonWriter



Category: The Avengers - Ambiguous Fandom
Genre: Awesome Darcy Lewis, Gen, Humor, Widow Darcy Lewis
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2017-12-25
Updated: 2018-01-08
Packaged: 2019-02-15 16:54:24
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 2
Words: 3,565
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/13035432
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/CrimsonWriter/pseuds/CrimsonWriter
Summary: Darcy Lewis is much older than she looks...and has a few unique skill sets at her disposal, as well.Updated: 1/8/2018 (mm/dd/yyyy)





	1. Pranked

"Madam?"

Darcy turned. "That's an old name."

Natasha quirked a smile.

Darcy cocked her head. "Natalia Romanova! Am I correct?" She opened up her arms for a hug, something that Natasha gratefully fell into. "It's been years, _moy student_. Have you moved onto different professions?"

"Like you don't know," Natasha said dryly.

Darcy grinned. "Of course I know. I tased your coworker."

Natasha grinned. "I have heard several stories about your prowess with your 'little lightning weapon'."

"Several?" Darcy laughed. "I only tased him once! He was freaking me out!"

"Each re-telling gets a little more dramatic."

"Ah, Thor. I definitely have an appreciation for his body, but he can't lie worth a damn," Darcy mused. "I guess his brother finally said— _if you have to lie, say nothing, because you suck at lying, dude!_ "

Natasha covered her mouth and pulled back, one hand on Darcy's shoulder. "Oh yes, you are most definitely Madam. What happened? You disappeared three-quarters of the way through my training."

"Eh, Widows," Darcy said, wrinkling her nose. "Really, most of them were a waste of space. All they needed was one. Got fed up teaching the brats. Was a singer for a bit in the fifties. Recluse during the sixties because that whole decade was just straight up weird, and you know something's weird when I say it is. Gymnast during the seventies. I tried being an author during the eighties but it didn't go very well, and then threw myself into bringing down the Soviet Union. I was a stunt double in a couple of movies, though, in between self-appointed missions. Tried my hand teaching high school during the nineties and just about killed the lot of them." Natasha laughed aloud. "Went back to being a stunt double and got a couple of odd jobs. Went to school to be a vet. Passed with honors." She thought for a moment. "Day-um, I was busy during the nineties. Anyway, the two thousands. Was an extra in a couple of movies, stunt double in a couple more. Was a zookeeper for a bit. Went back to school for a degree in mechanical engineering. Didn't really want to do anything with it, I just wanted to see all the tech." Natasha shook her head fondly. "Really glad I did, though, because I'm holding together poor Jane's machines with rubber bands and judicious use of duct tape. And that brings us to now, the two thousand tens. Got interested in all the political crap that's going on so I went for a political science degree. I needed six science credits and my interning with Jane got those credits, but also got me mixed up into all sorts of weirdness. Not quite as weird as the sixties, but pretty damn close."

Steve walked in then, so she didn't continue. She did lean over and ask Natasha in a quiet whisper: "Is he like Thor?"

Natasha made a so-so hand gesture. "We don't have to break any bad habits, like shattering glasses."

"You heard about that, did you?"

"Clint almost fell off the roof laughing when he did that. Of _course_ I heard about it."

Tony was evidently following Steve, because his eyes were locked on the super soldier until he glanced at the two women. Then he hollered, "Foster! Come round up your intern! She's conspiring against us!"

"Wow, he knows you and he doesn't even know your name," Natasha remarked dryly.

"Please, if I was conspiring with you against them, they'd be running for their lives already," Darcy retorted.

Tony eyed them warily. "Foster! Hurry up!"

"If Jane's in Science mode, nothing short of a bomb or Thor is going to get her from that lab," Darcy said, laughing.

He pointed at them. "No conspiring against us. I just ironed out the Loki-shaped crater in my floor."

"You'll know if I'm conspiring against you," Darcy promised. "I've been called a drama queen before. I like hearing screams of fear. Trust me, you'll know."

Tony looked at Darcy, before looking at Natasha like, _is she for real?_

Natasha was too busy very nonchalantly covering her mouth to hide her smile.

* * *

"You do realize that by going in and out of the Tower, and being seen with us, you've painted a target on your back?" Steve asked.

Only Natasha saw the amusement in Darcy's smile. "Yes, Steve, I know."

The super soldier looked a little lost as to how to maneuver around the thing that was Darcy. "Do you want someone to teach you basic defensive maneuvers?"

"No, I'm okay."

Now Steve looked downright concerned. "Are you sure? If you don't want to train with one of us—"

"I'll be fine, Steve," Darcy said, her smile gentling.

"You know, he's going to keep asking you until you say yes," Natasha drawled. "Or you give him proof that you can hold your own."

Darcy looked extremely amused. "Is that a 'go ahead and tell him, I want to see his face'?"

Natasha sat forward. "Yes."

"I feel like I'm about to get pranked," Steve said, grinning a bit.

Darcy patted his arm. "Steve, I don't need training because a) I've been on the run from various organizations for over eighty years and b) I was one of the people who _trained_ Natasha." She waited a moment, studying Steve's blank face, and then his chest. "Are you even breathing?"

Natasha positively _guffawed_.

"I've definitely been pranked," Steve finally said, his voice about three octaves higher than normal.

Darcy grinned brightly at him. "That's the spirit! Now, if you want to tell any of the others, that's fine, but Natasha and I have to be there to appreciate their faces, alright?"

Natasha grinned in anticipation.


	2. The Reveal

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> (Twice over.)

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Sorry for the consistently late updates. I went from on vacation to pneumonia. :'(  
> -Ruby

Steve had elected to not tell anyone else—because, he said, it was Darcy's business and not theirs. She was exposed rather abruptly when an attack was launched against the Tower itself, especially when she and Natasha worked together.

The enemy—regular humans, it appeared—seemed to be coming from everywhere, and Darcy and Jane had gotten trapped in the lab. Darcy was at the forefront, taking out people with nothing but her bare hands, with Jane behind her with Darcy's taser and five charges.

Natasha had appeared when Jane was down to two charges, looking slightly startled at Darcy's face—she was clearly in Widow mode, and so different from the bouncy college student that she had gotten used to. Then she launched herself at the enemy.

Later, Jane would describe the two as an acrobatic dance—Natasha had gotten thrown at one point, and Darcy reached up linked arms with her flying form, rolling with the momentum and somehow coming up back-to-back in fight stances.

Darcy laughed after that stunt as the soldiers—or whatever they were—backed away fearfully and swore. "Damn, that's going to hurt in the morning."

"Oh, please, Madam," Natasha said back, "You're practically indestructible."

"I haven't been an assassin in over ninety years, Widow," Darcy groused. "Stunt double, yes, assassin, no."

There was an amused cough from the right doorway where Captain America stood, and at least one disbelieving splutter from the left doorway, which housed Iron Man and Hawkeye.

"Widows, I believe that you should be focusing on the fight, not reminiscing over the past," Cap said, laughter threading through his voice.

Darcy sighed. "Right." She launched herself to one of the tables, planting her palms and flipping her body above her head, and wrapped her legs around the nearest man's neck. She threw her torso forward, continuing her momentum and managed to flip both herself and the man she was attached to into another enemy. Darcy let go just before the two went down like a ton of bricks and went flying towards her next victim.

The battle commenced and was finished in under a minute.

Steve looked at Darcy. "You good?"

She looked unruffled, sweater in place and jeans without a scratch. "Yep."

"Good. Natasha, Darcy, stay here and prevent any others from coming up the stairs. Clint, find Bruce and get him to the top of the Tower to prevent any from coming in aerially. Tony, you and I are going to flush the last of them out."

"Uh…" Tony said, still looking in Darcy's direction. "Who are you?"

"That would take way too much time to explain," Darcy said, smiling at him a bit mischievously. "Short version: original name was Daisy Goodwin, later trained as one of the first Widows and then proceeded to teach the third generation of them under the very simple pseudonym of Madam." She nodded at Natasha. "Now Darcy Lewis with a political science degree under her belt with a couple of payments as a stunt actress. So, should you guys go or just stand here gaping at me?"

"Right," Iron Man said. "You, however, are getting the third degree when all this is over, missy."

"Aw, Tony, I didn't know that you cared," Darcy simpered.

They all got the distinct feeling that Tony was rolling his eyes in the suit.

Once they all left, Darcy felt a soft touch to her arm. "Why didn't you tell me?" Jane asked.

"Hmm, lemme think, how do I tell my boss that I'll be celebrating my hundred and seventy-fifth birthday in a few years?" Darcy asked sarcastically. "I'm not like Steve, Jane, I've watched the world shape and change and the years pass me on by."

"But you still could have—"

"Let me put this into perspective for you," Darcy said. "I fought in the Civil War as a seven-year-old look-alike spy for the North. I was seventeen when the Emancipation Proclamation was signed by Abraham Lincoln. Do the math."

Natasha let out a low whistle.

Jane faltered. "But even after Thor…?"

"I thought about it," Darcy admitted. "But then I said to myself, 'Self, Jane has enough otherworldly problems that she doesn't need any more Earthly problems. Just shut up and protect her if need be.' And, obviously, it needed be."

Jane's mouth flapped for a moment, and when she finally said, "Thank you," Darcy was a little startled.

She grinned a little hesitantly. "I'll tell you more once we're not being roughed up by a couple of _different_ jackbooted thugs, boss lady."

The blonde grinned back, equally hesitant. "Did you ever meet Lincoln?"

"Once," Darcy said. "Very briefly. He was otherwise occupied with a meeting with Salmon Chase—"

"Who?"

"The Secretary of the Treasury," Darcy said impatiently. "The one then, anyway. The Civil War sapped at the funds quite dramatically, you know."

"Uh…no, I actually haven't thought about it."

Darcy snorted. "Americans. You people have no idea what your country is funding."

"Hey—"

Jane was cut off with a shove from Darcy that sent her stumbling into one of her machines. When she righted herself, she found her intern standing over one enemy and mid-kick, aimed at one—or possibly both—standing in the doorway.

* * *

"So, Lewis, or Goodwin, or whatever the hell you want us to call you. I didn't quite get the memo that you were—are?—a Widow?" Stark said flippantly.

"Were," Darcy confirmed. "Haven't been an assassin or even an assailant in over fifty years. The last war that I actively fought in was World War I."

Barton wheezed a bit.

"I knew her as simply Madam. She was one of my teachers," Natasha said simply.

"What exactly did you teach?" Banner asked.

"Think of Coulson's skills," Natasha said, though the question had been directed at Darcy. "Unflappable and able to fight with anything and everything, and come out with nary a drop of blood on their clothes. She was the…enhancer of our skill set, I suppose. Daisy Goodwin—aka, Darcy Lewis—trained George Spinell, who trained then-Col. Nicholas Fury, who trained Agent Coulson. That's the only line that I know that still exists today."

"There are several others still," Darcy said, smirking at the various bobbing Adam's apples in the room as they realized her legacy. "Most of them are retired, and one's been on and off the radar for the past seventy years, and I had to… _convince_ one that he was retiring."

Natasha snorted. "How did that go?"

"He's a world-renown author now, so I suppose that it went well," Darcy said, still smirking.

"Who's the one who's been on and off the radar?" Steve asked.

The smirk fell. "My only failure. I still don't know what his real name is, but he goes by the Winter Soldier."

Stark leapt to his feet. "He's a _myth!_ "

"He's not."

The two women looked at each other, surprised at the other's same, simply stated words. "You go first," Darcy said.

"I was on protection detail. The Winter Soldier shot out the car's tires and sent us teetering on the edge of a cliff. We managed to get out and I protected my assignment, but he still killed him, through me." She lifted up the left side of her shirt, showing a bright pink scar. "Slug, straight through me and into my detail's heart."

Darcy swallowed. "After World War II, I briefly went back to Russia to see if I could turn any Widows and force them to give it up or join me in my then-semi-retirement. The Soviets had somehow acquired a man—an insanely skilled man, the best sniper I've ever seen to this day. He had lost an arm somewhere and they somehow replaced it with a bionic one. I'm no Stark, but I could tell that it was a beaut of a machine. It looked and acted just like a regular arm—albeit metal with insane strength behind it, something that _still_ hasn't really been made possible today, and they did this in the 1950s."

Stark let out a low whistle.

"One of my first students obviously made a questionable call in teaching someone, because they had brought in a specialist that used my specific techniques to further train this man to…well, become the perfect assassin. He had been given a kind of super soldier serum, too," she added, with a nod to Steve. "His first assignment out, I intercepted him. Managed to hold him down and talk to him for about forty five seconds."

Natasha coughed in surprise. Barton shot her a look.

"I don't tell you this to make you hesitate if or when you see him," Darcy continued, ignoring the exchange, "because if you hesitate, he won't. But he's been brainwashed. Programmed, like a half-assed computer. They keep him on cryo for the most part—and he's absolutely terrified of that box. He escaped from me the first chance that he got, and I've never been able to find him since."

The redheaded assassin next to her sighed. "If that's a half-assed machine…"

"You saw him later than I did," Darcy said. "What was that, the '80s? They'd had thirty years to figure it out by then. When I saw him, he'd already partially broken through his programming."

Stark let out a low whistle. "You think you could draw him? We can put out a picture and a warning—and a warrant—on him."

Darcy hesitated. "Maybe? It might take me a couple of tries to get it right. It was almost seventy years ago."

Subconsciously, they all glanced at Steve, who was frowning and digging in a duffel bag. When he came up with a sketch pad and a pencil, Darcy brightened. He slid them across the table to her.

They all fell silent as they watched her struggle. Lines were drawn, erased, and redrawn. She smeared graphite across a cheek, then left a sharp line of white paper with the eraser, and spent an inordinate amount of time on the eyes, drawing and erasing and drawing and erasing until the eraser on the pencil was all but gone.

After almost an hour, she sat back and scowled.

"Darcy," Steve said, staring at her drawing. His face was white as the paper in the sketchbook. "Are you sure…?"

"That's as close as I can get it," she said, scowling at the paper. "My serum gives me long life and an increased ability for muscle mass, not perfect recall. It's not right, but my memory isn't good enough to tell me what exactly isn't right."

Steve silently took the sketchbook and flipped to another page, revealing a detailed drawing of a broken body sprawled in snow, eyes unseeing but face still recognizable. Several of the Avengers blinked at such a dark and graphic drawing in Steve's sketchbook.

"Holy shit," Darcy breathed, looking at the two flesh limbs. "You knew him _before_ he was the Winter Soldier? Who was he?"

Steve's voice was two octaves higher from tears. "He was my best friend. Bucky Barnes."

Natasha startled badly. "The sniper? The one you rescued during that rather infamous first trip?"

Darcy clutched at her hair. "Oh my God. Oh my God. _Steve_." Suddenly, she whirled around and gripped one of his hands in both of hers. " _Steve_. We'll get him back. I promise. The programming takes a couple of years to break totally, Natasha and I can both attest to that, but after that, you'll be able to reminisce about the good old days without fear of triggering something."

"A couple of _years_?" Barton asked, looking at Natasha.

Darcy and Natasha looked at each other.

"Clint," Natasha said, hints of fondness in her voice. "If I had still been programmed, I would have killed you—or myself, if I hadn't been able to overpower you. I would have taken a knife, one of your arrows, a nearby fencepost, and impaled myself through the eye. There was no way for you to have actually taken me in as a true Widow."

"Such a melodramatic brat," Darcy commented.

"Is that not right?" Natasha demanded.

"No, that's right," Darcy agreed. "I just thought that you'd pay attention to the delicate sensibilities that we've got going here." She looked at Clint. "I take it that it took a couple of months and a dozen triggers?"

He nodded.

"For the Winter Soldier, he probably has a hundred to two hundred triggers," Darcy guessed. "Most of them probably revolve around the basics: wake up, go to sleep, and receiving orders. Some might be an override to the previous orders. It takes a lot of willpower and a lot of courage to break those triggers," she warned Steve. Natasha nodded silently. Darcy reached under the table and took a stiff assassin's hand in her own. "Most of them are implanted by torture, like a harsher Pavlov's dog. Natasha and I were both trained from a young age, and our punishments got worse as we got older. The Winter Soldier is different. He was someone before they got their hands on him. Those triggers will be sneaky and come out of nowhere, and he might flip from Steve's Bucky to an assassin with no memory in an instant."

Bruce closed his eyes. "So like the Other Guy?"

They all shifted uncomfortably.

"That's what it means to break those triggers, Bruce," Natasha said, smiling bitterly. "Getting that skill back, to be able to do it willingly. The only time I slept for almost a year was through pills and knocking myself out on the headboard of my bed. I had to tell my ninety-year-old neighbor my triggers to wake up, otherwise I'd never wake."

"That's inhuman," Stark bit out.

"Sweetheart, I was injected with a serum that lets me age a seventh of the amount that people usually do at the age of four, so I'll be six hundred before I look eighty five at the hands of the Union, was sold to a 'Southern gentleman' _after_ the Civil War ends for four thousand dollars and was promptly sold again to Russia for eight thousand dollars," Darcy said, sweetly sarcastic. "We were slaves, Stark. We weren't mercenaries, we didn't get paid. The only gain that we got was not being strapped to a chair and electrocuted for kicks."

"Darcy," Natasha said, very calm. "You're in danger of breaking my hand."

Darcy let go of her hand like it was hot. "I'm sorry," she said immediately. She took a deep breath and consciously relaxed. "Point is, I celebrated the turn of the century by burning my list of triggers and crucifying my old handler to the wall of my old cell and painting the walls with the words 'I'VE GONE HOME' in his blood. He's going to be confused, half Bucky and half Winter Soldier when we first get through to him. Then he's got to break down his triggers, in which he's going to be tired, cranky, protective, and angry. Then he's going to be vengeful and want to bring the world to its knees. Then he's got to figure out who he is again, and there will be mood swings with a vengeance. But first, we have to track him down."

All of them were looking at the two women—particularly Natasha, who had been nodding absently throughout Darcy's speech.

"I can deal with that," Steve said softly. "I've wanted to burn the world down a couple times myself."

"It's really satisfying, watching things blow up," Stark said to him.

Darcy and Natasha glanced at each other, grins hovering around their mouths. They had a team of pyromaniacs in the making, apparently.

**Author's Note:**

> In all honesty, this isn't supposed to be a dark and angsty fic. So enjoy something that probably doesn't make a whole lot of sense!  
> -Ruby


End file.
